


Um.... Oops?

by grainjew



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Absolutely Zero Hetero Nonsense (but percy! you say. percy is bi and adorable and doesnt count), Gen, Identity Reveal, POV Outsider, Post-The Last Olympian, Pre-The Heroes of Olympus, and where percy is lowkey invincible, having a bunch of battle-hardened teenagers stare at you sure is is an experience, man i had SO much fun writing this, set riiiiiight in that little gap of time where everythings peaceful and happy, this is just a classic ~mortal finds out about the mythological world and is very impressed~ fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 15:58:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15911529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/grainjew
Summary: Scarlet Williams, sophomore at Goode High School, was stretched out in the back of her friend Percy's car when a twelve year old materialized in the passenger seat.The next thing she knew, apparently Greek mythology was real and liked trying to kill her friend. Great.





	Um.... Oops?

**Author's Note:**

> outsider pov has been a delightful staple of my fanfic diet from the very beginning, and im so glad that im finally able to post something that contributes to what is possibly my favorite genre of dumb and fun content
> 
> enjoy! i'm on tumblr @grainjew

Scarlet Williams, sophomore at Goode High School, was stretched out in the back of her friend Percy's car when a twelve year old materialized in the passenger seat.

Seriously.

The front seat had been empty (Scarlet preferred the back, since she could turn sideways and lie nearly all the way down), and then she blinked in the middle of a sentence about the marine bio project her and Percy were working together on and it was full. The kid was scrawny, almost wispy, and dressed in black like a miniature Hot Topic shopper.

"Nico?" said Percy, turning away from the road to stare.

"You're needed at camp," said the kid, and Scarlet couldn't help but notice his eyes as he turned to look at her friend, a deep brown like chocolate or dusty afternoon shadows and ringed with weariness.

Percy turned the car abruptly at the next corner, even though to get to his house where their half-complete posterboard project was he should have kept going straight. "What's going on?" He sounded... worried.

"We're under attack," said Nico tightly. Uh, _what_? "Some of the monsters that survived the war managed to get themselves together. It wouldn't be so bad, but it's only year-rounders right now, and there's so many new campers… It’s a lucky thing I decided to check up on my cabin today."

"Got it," said Percy. He shifted, speeding as fast as he could in New York traffic. Scarlet wondered if he had forgotten she was in the car, and thought that was probably a good thing. She wasn't exactly the most observant person ever but even she could tell that there was something different about the way he held himself -- she was used to her humorous disaster classmate, who knew a lot about fish and practically nothing else, not this Percy, tense and somehow deadly.

"Can you shadow travel again, Nico?" Percy glanced over at Nico again, his tone softer than it had been in the whole conversation.

Nico grumbled. "Not without passing out."

"Car it is, then."

They drove in anxious silence as the city faded into fields, the roads grew less frequented, and Percy sped so fast Scarlet couldn't see the speed limit signs to know how much they were breaking the law.

"Um," she said finally, because the silence was getting uncomfortable.

"Percy, there's someone in your back seat," said Nico, twisting around to stare at Scarlet with a hostility that had her shrinking back, despite his obvious weariness.

Percy let out a long string of what were probably swears in some language Scarlet didn't know. "That's Scarlet," he said, in English, finally. "We were on our way to work on a school project when you dropped in."

"Is she—"

"Mortal? Yeah. _Hades_ , how did I forget... we don't have time to go back and drop her off, or something."

"Quit using my dad's name as a curse," grumbled Nico.

"Hey, everyone does it!" said Percy back. "There's nothing stopping you using _my_ dad's name as a curse, anyways."

"Um," butted in Scarlet, before she could remember Percy's dangerous aura and Nico's baleful glare and think to stop herself. "Mortal? Hades? Can I have an explanation?"

"The Greek gods exist," explained Percy, like it was obvious. "Unfortunately." Thunder rumbled in the distance, despite the clear sky. "Oh, shut _up,_  Zeus."

" _Percy_." Nico buried his face in his hands.

"Uh, what," said Scarlet, because they _must_ be joking, but also, this wasn't the sort of thing Percy joked about. But also, they were called myths for a _reason_. Sure, Scarlet was agnostic, but she wasn't sure agnosticism stretched to this sort of thing.

Percy twisted around, taking his eyes off the road despite the speed he was going at to look at her. "I'm sorry, Scarlet," he said, so deeply sad and regretful that Scarlet didn't know what to do. "I'll explain better later."

Then, reassuringly, he turned back around to the road and motioned at Nico, that tense bearing like a general's falling over him again as he asked, "What was the exact situation at camp when you left?"

Nico blinked, like he was trying to stay awake. "Clarisse is leading the defense. No casualties yet, but it's only a matter of time." He grimaced. "It's mostly hellhounds, some empousai, some cyclopes, a few dracanae. They're trying to get at Thalia's tree, probably figure it's the barrier's main anchor point."

"Assholes," said Percy, and sped up more as Nico explained some precise logistics using names Scarlet had never heard before.

The Long Island coast zoomed by.

"Oh, gods," said Percy, coming to a horrified realization. "Scarlet. The Mist."

"The what?" If he was telling the truth about all this, then it definitely explained some of his weirder verbal tics. Definitely the _gods_ thing.

"The Mist," repeated Percy. "It's this, like, magic thing, that makes it so mortals like you don't see the mythological world for what it is. Instead of empousai and hellhounds you'll probably see cheerleaders and poodles. Thought you should, uh, get a warning, even if you don’t believe me, which you probably don’t honestly, so you don't think I'm stabbing cheerleaders or something. Wouldn't be the first time the Mist's made me look like a murderer, and all. I swear it hates me."

“It’s not even sentient,” said Nico.

And maybe Scarlet should have focused on the murder part, but her priorities got all mixed up somewhere between her brain and her mouth and she said instead, "You talk like you're not mortal."

"Well," said Percy, awkwardly. "I'm kind of not." A pause. "I'm a demigod. So is Nico. My dad's Poseidon and his is Hades."

Scarlet was saved from having to reply to _that_ by the car coming to a stop halfway up a hill, thick with long grass and bordered by strawberry fields. Percy and Nico had their doors open almost before Scarlet could catch her breath from the sharp halt.

"Stay here," ordered Percy in Scarlet's direction, and then he was off up the hill, Nico right behind him.

She followed them with her gaze, to see a motley collection of teenagers in orange shirts and what looked like ren faire cosplay facing a small army of saleswomen, construction workers, and, just as Percy had said, cheerleaders and poodles.

Percy raised a baseball bat he had not been holding ten seconds ago in the air as he crested the hill and the teenagers let out a ragged cheer. He shouted something at them, and most of them retreated back behind an enormous pine.

And then he charged into the middle of the little army, slamming into a cheerleader's side with the baseball bat so hard she stopped existing.

Scarlet nearly recoiled, but then she caught herself, remembering Percy's explanation, and narrowed her eyes, squinting at the scene in front of her and willing this Mist to part, to show her the truth, _(please let Percy be telling the truth please let Percy not be a murderer)_ , until just for a split second, it did.

For that instant, Percy looked like one of the gods of old he claimed to be the son of, eyes fierce and green and turbulent as the sea at storm, bronze sword gleaming in the sunlight and no movement wasted as he whirled and slashed and _danced_ through a horde of what Scarlet could see now really were monsters, snake women and cyclopes and dogs as black as night and big as trucks. And through it all, nothing touched him, nothing slowed him, nothing could stand against him. A hurricane in motion, as unstoppable as the tide itself.

She was forced to blink, and the Mist shuttered over her vision again, and Scarlet tried to reconcile what she'd seen with her fidgety classmate and his horrible grades.

After what could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, Percy and the few teenagers who hadn't moved back when he arrived, among them a big burly girl in red armor, managed to somehow defeat the entire army. The monsters evaporated into thin air under their counterassault, and they cheered again, triumphant, victorious.

Once they started collapsing carelessly to the ground in elated exhaustion, Scarlet deemed it safe enough to exit the car and walk up the hill. She was going to have her answers. She didn’t even know what she wanted to know, technically Percy had already told her what was going on, but she was getting answers anyways. She was!

Her courage faded when she was halfway between the car and the crest of the hill, right around when the worn teenager-warriors noticed her and moved to grab their weapons, a whole host of objects that flickered in her vision from common household implements to deadly shining bronze. Before she could bolt, Percy rolled over onto an elbow and raised a hand in the universal gesture for _stop_. Scarlet gaped as they all grumbled and put down their weapons, some of them much more reluctantly than others.

Somehow, the way Percy could command unquestioning obedience with just a gesture was almost more shocking than any gods or monsters.

“She’s with me,” said Percy, not sounding very happy about it. Scarlet was too busy being impressed to really be offended. “Mortal.”

“And what would Annabeth say, if she heard you brought some mortal to Camp while she was off supervising the reconstruction on Olympus?” teased someone loudly. Scarlet knew that Annabeth was Percy’s girlfriend because he never shut up about her, but the, uh, Olympus part was new.

“Absolutely nothing, because we’re leaving right now,” Percy sniped back. “Not my fault Nico got so good at shadow-travelling he can appear in a moving car.” Okay. So. He really had just materialized in the passenger seat. Good to know.

“How many mortals are you going to lead here, anyways?” asked someone else, still teasing.

“First of all, Rachel stole my pegasus. I had nothing to do with that. Second of all, _we_ ,” he gestured at Scarlet, still frozen partway up the hill, “have a marine bio project to finish.” He levered himself up to standing and scanned across the battered collection of teenagers with his eyes. “Can you guys manage the rest? I’d stay, but I’d rather not get kicked out of school in October. I try and wait ‘till spring at least, usually.”

“‘Course we can, Prissy,” groused the big girl with the red armor. She scoffed. “Just ‘cause you were the big hero in the war…”

“Yeah, yeah, o great Drakon-Slayer, I get it,” said Percy back. “Camp’s in your hands, don’t set it on fire. And Nico, take a nap.”

He spun on his heel and walked back towards the car, grabbing Scarlet’s arm on the way down and apparently content with having the last word as he ignored the threats being yelled at his back and Nico’s indignant “Hey!”

“That was Clarisse, daughter of Ares,” explained Percy, when they were in the car and driving away from… wherever they’d been. Scarlet hardly remembered even getting to the car, and definitely didn’t remember how she’d ended up in the front seat.

She tried to recall the little Greek mythology she knew. “That’s, uh, the… war god, right?”

“Right.” Percy nodded. He was driving at a much less alarming speed now, so Scarlet didn’t panic when his attention wasn’t perfectly on the road. “Her bark is worse than her bite, really. Lot like her dad. Well, her bite is pretty bad, too. She’s got this nasty electric spear… And she did kill that drakon, which was pretty cool. Terrifying, but cool. The her killing it, not the drakon. That thing was just terrifying.”

“Um, okay,” said Scarlet. She decided not to ask, because she had a feeling she would just get more confused. “What did she mean, you were the big hero in the war?”

“Oh, well, there was this prophecy that bad things would happen on my sixteenth birthday.” His eyes flickered to the side. “Bad things happened on my sixteenth birthday.”

“Oh,” she said. “That sucks.”

“You’re telling me.”

She wanted to ask more, but he didn’t look like he wanted to share, and Scarlet knew when to respect a person’s privacy.

Also, that display earlier helped with the whole not prying thing. Percy may not be a murderer, but she still didn’t want to get on the bad side of someone who was untouchable in a fight and commanded a miniature army of battle-hardened teenagers.

“So, the Greek gods exist,” she repeated instead, still not sure whether she could bring herself to believe it.

“Right,” said Percy. “You’re taking it a lot better than I did, and I had the actual Minotaur chase me to Camp trying to kill me.”

Scarlet gaped. “The _actual Minotaur_? For real? Like the one in that maze with the string and everything?”

Percy smirked. “Yep.”

“Isn’t it, like, uh, dead?” Scarlet wasn’t really sure how to make the question less blunt.

“Gods, I wish,” said Percy, rolling his eyes. He explained something confusing and kind of horrifying about how monsters just poof and then regenerate a few years later. “Annabeth told me they don’t come back within your lifetime if you’re lucky, but I don’t know how much that counts for because demigods have notoriously short lifespans and also my luck _sucks_.”

“So, those monsters you guys were fighting…” said Scarlet, ignoring the comment about short lifespans for now because thinking about the implications of it was just not something that sounded pleasant.

Percy jerked his head around to stare at her. “You saw through the Mist?”

“Just for a second, when I concentrated really hard,” she explained. “You were…” Terrifying? Awe-inspiring? Neither of those were really something you could just _say_ to a person, even if it was true. Especially if it was true. “Really cool,” she finished lamely.

“Uh, thanks,” said Percy. If his blush was any indication, he didn’t really know how to respond to praise. “Even if it was only for a second, seeing through the Mist like that is pretty cool too, especially ‘cause you’re a not clear-sighted mortal.”

“Well, if I hadn’t, I would have thought you were murdering innocent cheerleaders with a bat, so, probably a good thing I managed it.”

“Probably, yeah,” said Percy, grinning a little sardonically.

“What _were_ those women with the weird legs, though?” Scarlet had _not_ been raised on Greek mythology, and she was suddenly feeling the lack.

“Empousai,” said Percy, making a face. “They’re basically like extra-magical Ancient Greek vampires. The hissy snake-women were dracanae, and the dogs are hellhounds and the cyclopes are cyclopes.” He sighed.

“Thanks, I didn’t notice that last one,” said Scarlet dryly.

“Shut up,” said Percy.

“For real, though, do you fight these things all the time?” The thought of that set off an unpleasant reaction somewhere in the pit of Scarlet’s stomach.

Percy shrugged. “I mean, not that many usually. We’re just coming off a war — that bad stuff I mentioned that happened on my sixteenth birthday — so all the stragglers left over are after our heads. But monsters are usually pretty much only attracted to demigods. Apparently we smell like like a five-star restaurant.”

“So that’s why I haven’t seen them before?"

“That and the Mist, yeah,” said Percy. “Although, you have actually met some. Remember those cheerleaders at freshman orientation? Empousai.”

Scarlet’s eyes widened. “ _Seriously_?”

“Yep! Nearly got me expelled.”

“Ooh, that sucks,” said Scarlet, sympathetically. “Seems like most things about this whole demigod thing suck, actually.”

“You’ve got it in one!”

“Ouch.”

Percy reached up a hand from the steering wheel to finger the beads around his neck. “Practically everyone I care about is back at camp, though.” He grinned at some joke Scarlet wasn’t privy to. “And I wouldn’t give them up for the world.”

Scarlet couldn’t think of a reply that didn’t seem trite, so they drove in silence for a few minutes as New York traffic thickened around them.

“I have _so_ many questions,” she said finally, trying to pull her brain together. “And you’re going to answer all of them. But first things first, is that Clarisse girl single?”

“No, she’s got a boyfriend,” said Percy, frowning like he was trying to do math. “Why?”

“She’s scary. I’m very gay.” Scarlet shrugged, remorseless. “It was worth a try.”

“Scary girls can be very attractive,” agreed Percy, “but not if they tried to dunk your head in the toilet the first time you met.” He grinned at Scarlet’s expression. “Even if she did mellow out over the years, and if you tell her I said that I will have to kill you. Now, what were your _other_ questions? Only the Aphrodite kids know the exact takenness status of every demigod living or dead, and my mom is very, very mortal.”

**Author's Note:**

> and she doesn't even know about his superpowers yet


End file.
